Facebook 2010 Facebook Images

Infobox Dotcom company

company_name = Facebook, Inc.
company_logo =
company_type = Private
founder = Mark Zuckerberg
Chris Hughes
Dustin Moskovitz
Eduardo Saverin
area_served = Worldwide
foundation = Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
location = Palo Alto, California
Dublin, Ireland (headquarters for Europe, Africa, Middle East)
Seoul, South Korea (headquarters for Asia)
key_people = Mark Zuckerberg (CEO)
Chris Cox (VP of Product)
Sheryl Sandberg (COO)
revenue = US$800 million (2009 est.)

cite web

|url=http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Facebook-09-revenue-neared-800-mn-Sources/articleshow/6063819.cms |title= Facebook '09 revenue neared $800 mn |accessdate= 18 Jun 2010 |publisher= The Economic Times

net_income =
num_employees = 1400 (2010)
url = facebook.com
screenshot =
caption = Screenshot of Facebook's homepage
website_type = Social network service
language = Multilingual
advertising = Banner ads, referral marketing, Casual games
registration = Required
num_users = 500 million (active in Jul. 2010)
launch_date = February 4, 2004
current_status = Active
alexa = 2 (June 2010)
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to become a member of the website. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Pakistan, A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.

History

created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. The site represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, according to the Harvard Crimson. The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion, but ultimately the charges were dropped. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service. , Palo Alto, California. Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step. Traffic to Facebook has increased exponentially since 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010. Facebook has also become the top social network across eight of individual markets in the region, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam, while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc in Taiwan.

Company

Most of Facebook's revenues comes from Credits, and advertisements that are served from the website's Flyers application. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising, On November 6, 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Beacon, which was an ultimately failed attempt to advertise to friends of users using the knowledge of what purchases friends made. Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. For banner advertisements, they have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks on Facebook compared to the Web as a whole. On Pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. As of December 2007, Facebook had approximately 800 employees—35% of whom work virtually—and had offices in 18 countries.

Website

Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information and other personal information. Communicating with friends and other users can be done through private or public messages or a chat feature. Users can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages" until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising. The website is free to users and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads. The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see; Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user's profile can also view that user's Wall. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only. Over time, Facebook has added features to its website. On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user's friends. One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos. Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services. which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers. Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift. On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look. On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process. Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. An official Facebook application is available for both the iPhone OS and the Android OS. Nokia and Research in Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices.

Reception

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of which responded that Facebook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and Linkedln. Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada, In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants. It is believed to be the world's first legal judgement that defines a summons posted on Facebook as legally binding. By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb "facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's own. As of April 2010, according to ''The New York Times'', countries with most Facebook users are the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia. which enables text-based searches of those Wall posts which are available to "Everyone," i.e. to everyone on the Internet.

wikinewshas|news involving Facebook|

Facebook has also drawn criticism from a number of groups and has been banned by certain organizations or entire governments. Criticism often centers around the privacy of members or third parties, the way in which Facebook uses members' information and controversial content posted by members. Major updates to Facebook's layout has also briefly caused outrage in the past.

Impact

debates in 2008 Facebook's effect on the American political system became clear in January 2008, shortly before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.

In media

American author Ben Mezrich published a book in July 2009 about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, titled ''The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal''. Facebook, and social networking sites in general, have been parodied in the British sitcom ''The IT Crowd'' in their December 2008 episode "FriendFace". ''The Social Network'', an upcoming comedy-drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, is set to be released October 1, 2010. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, Brenda Song as Joanna Simmons, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Rooney Mara as Erica, and Armie Hammer as Cameron Winklevoss. The film is written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book ''The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal''. The film will be distributed by Columbia Pictures. None of the Facebook staff, including Zuckerberg, are involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich's book. At the age of 102, Ivy Bean of Bradford, England joined Facebook in 2008, making her one of the oldest people ever on Facebook. An inspiration to other residents,

See also

CampusNetwork
Diaspora
MySpace
Wirehog

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Official website
"Facebook news and reviews" at ''The Daily Telegraph''